Left Behind
by TheLockPickingVictorian
Summary: Out there, somewhere, there's another universe, where Eobard Thawne murdered Cisco Ramon and left his body on the floor in the lab...


STARlabs was too big. And Caitlin really had no idea why she was only discovering that now, today of all days.

Barry had ignore her - cut her off when, to be honest, telling him that Doctor Wells had vanished out of his wheelchair was kind of incredibly important. But then, so was saving Central City from a tidal wave of destruction, and she had no choice to but to forgive him for that, not that it was something that she would have held against him anyway. Because Joe was in danger too, and she liked Joe. And her city, of course.

So her next course of action was to find Cisco. Her partner in crime would believe her. He had to. Of all the weird stuff that he'd come to her about in the last two years, he could bloody well believe her about this.

All she had to do now was find him really, hence why the big, big building was hindersome. Because he'd vanished too, just like that, into thin air, and that really did not bode well for the butterflies that were hatching in her stomach. Because paralyzed Doctor Wells had walked away from his wheelchair, and Cisco had been suspicious of him all day and now he was missing and did she mention that Wells had vanished from his wheelchair?

She wasn't freaking out at all. No, no way in hell. Nope. That was not happening.

She sounded like Felicity. Again.

Caitlin ducked her head into the pipeline - the store rooms - the labs again - Barry's treadmill room - even braved the bathrooms, but Cisco's loud victory yells were missing in each, back hair no where to be seen. And he wasn't picking up his phone, or answering when she hollered his name, or… anything. Just, poof, missing Cisco. Hence butterflies, thousands of them, in a way she hadn't felt since Ronnie had proposed. Complete, unrivaled nervousness.

Retreating back to the lab in defeat, she nudged the mouse of his computer, the black glowing into his home screen, and then eventually the last designs that he'd been looking at before he'd decided to play Houdini. The containment field blueprints glared back at her, and the one place that she'd not checked hit her smack in the face. He'd been obsessed with the thing all day. God how could she be such an idiot?

Her heels - not a good idea for when running around with heroes, she was still not entirely sure how Felicity had managed it every day for two years - clicked on the floor, and she stooped down to pull them off, gripped in one hand as she continued faster down the corridor, hurrying towards the door quicker now that she was relatively pain free.

"Cisco?" She called quietly, tapping her knuckles on the heavy metal door, deciding that it wouldn't be wise or kind to scare the poor thing, not with the week he'd been having. While it could be cute, a scared Cisco was not one she wanted to deal with. Never again. "You in here?" At first glance, to room looked empty, not a soul in sight and she stepped further into the room. Because while she didn't want to scare him, it wouldn't be entirely out of character for him to try and care her. But her eyes dropped to the floor then too, and oh god, Cisco.

"No!" The word fell from her mouth without permission, small and delicate and a total contradiction to the force she used to toss aside her shoes and cross the small space faster that Barry could have himself. Her knees collided with the stone floor beside his head, her hands going to his neck to find the pulse that part of her knew wasn't going to be there.

"Cisco?" She gripped at his shoulders, using the weak muscles in her arms to turn him over onto his back. His eyes were closed, like he was sleeping, like all those times he'd fallen asleep on her sofa watching movies with her, or alcohol had knocked him clean out. Normal. Not dead. "Come on, Cisco, come on. Wake up. Get up, please. Come on…"

But Cisco had never really liked listening to her. Classic younger brother syndrome.

Medically he looked fine. There was still saline leaking from behind his closed eyes, wet tears that she wiped away with her thumb. There were no entry wounds, no exit wounds, the blood in his veins still a healthy red, not tinged green was Barry's had been when the Mist had got hold of him. He was still warm. But she couldn't find a pulse. Or any signs that he was breathing. Or any signs of life.

"Cisco..." She whispered gently, pressing her lips together tightly as she fought to hold back the whimper that had been punched from her abdomen. He'd been there for her, through Ronnie and Barry and the Metahumans, through everything, he wasn't allowed to leave her now. She didn't want him to. She couldn't let him go.

"Come on, come on." Her weak voice turned into a loud shriek when she shook him fiercely by the shoulders, wiping away her own tears with the back of her hands, taking in the oxygen she needed in the sharp gasps he could no longer take. "Please, Cisco. Cisco!"

The door behind her opened, and she had no need to turn, not to know who it was who was entering. Cisco's murderer. The Reverse Flash.

Harrison Wells.

"Hello Caitlin." He said it neutrally, normally, like nothing was out of the ordinary. Like he wasn't standing. Like he hadn't just murdered her best friend. "I'm sorry you had to find out about this."

"What did you do to him?" She demanded, wanting to stand and face him the way he did to her, to Cisco, but she couldn't bring herself to leave her little brother there, alone, the way he had died. So she stayed on the floor, her knees under his head and her back to his killer, her voice wavering as she attempted to intimidate him. "Why?"

"Because he knew my secret." Without turning, she knew there was a smile there, pulling his lips up, like he found something amusing. "Because he worked it out. Like you did, only without the help."

"So you killed him?" She forced herself to turn then, to shift herself around so she still cradled Cisco's head in her lap but so she could glare up at him. "Cisco? Our Cisco? Who you all but adopted, because you cared so much for him? Loyal Cisco? Who did you think he'd tell?"

"Barry. Detective West. Yourself." He shrugged. "It seems I couldn't quite prevent that last one."

"No!" She snapped up at him, her voice wobbling slightly, the image of him blurring through the tears had rose there. They dripped down her chin, like the ones that Cisco had never had the chance to cry. "No, you couldn't. Did you not think that I wouldn't find out, that I wouldn't find him, and that I wouldn't work it out? Oh, I may not be as smart as Cisco in your eyes, but I'm smart enough to work out that you're evil!"

Wells' face contorted, like she'd insulted him, or maybe more like she'd punched him somewhere painful with all of Oliver's strength. "I'm not evil, Caitlin." He told her, and while his face had changed, his voice didn't, like it didn't have another setting other than 'calm'. Well, she was right about something, at least.

"No, you're not." She raised her chin, locking her jaw in place, fluttering the moisture from her eyelids. Wells had seen her sobs after Ronnie's 'death', her tears wouldn't affect her, but her anger… she watched to confusion and irritation flash across his face. "You're a fucking monster."

"I can understand why you'd think that," He nodded, approaching in careful steps with legs she'd been told would never respond to any kind of treatment. Now, she had to spare a moment of thought, to wonder how he'd been diagnosed medically, with a disability that he didn't have. If he'd hurt - if he'd killed - innocent people to aide this goal. But with Cisco's limp head resting in her lap, she couldn't scoot away when he knelt in front of her. "I know what Cisco told you, what you think I have done. What you don't know, Caitlin, are the reasons why I did them."

"I don't care about your reasons, you sick son of a bitch," She was glad, in that moment, that she couldn't see herself, because judging by the expression that finally took over Wells' features, there must have been something in her face, in the bared teeth and squinted eyes, that was absolutely terrifying. "You didn't have to kill him!"

"I did, Caitlin." He reached towards her, laying a careful hand on her arm. "You just don't understand why." Her hand came up without her permission, striking across his face, turning his head with the force and branding matching red marks across both his cheek and her palm. He didn't react at all, apart from removing his hand from her person. He just stared.

"Tell me." She demanded, she sniffs of misery reducing the controlling impact she'd intended.

"Cisco, not long from now, was going to get himself into trouble." He stated calmly, reaching into his pocket to pull a scrap of something orange from within. It was a mask, she realised, not like Barry's, that covered the whole head, but like Oliver and Roy's, only meant to obscure the eyes, all jagged edges and bright colours. "The result of the accident was not unlike Barry's lightning strike: It gave him powers. Made him a hero in his own right. They'll call him Vibe."

She blinked. And then again, staring at the mask he pushed into her hands. He spoke in the past tense. Like whatever was going to happen,had happened. She shook her head. It didn't matter. Not really.

"And for what I'm doing here, what I did to Nora Allen fifteen years ago, I need to be associated with as few heros as possible. And my partnership with Barry Allen is one that I can not break. Cisco's death was, regrettably, my only option."

"Murderer." She spat in his face. No, she'd decided, his reasons were of no consequence. Now she knew she didn't care why, she realized, they couldn't change the past. Nothing could.

Wells nodded at her. "Yes. And, I'm afraid that for what I'm doing here, also I need to be associated with as few villains as possible."

"Hence the pipeline." She nodded. That, at least, she understood.

"Hence the pipeline," He nodded back. "Killer Frost."

She didn't even have it in her to blink at him this time. She knew that tone of voice. It was one that she heard often coming from Cisco. When he was naming a metahuman. Ironically, it sent ice through her veins.

"Me?" She heard the squeak in her voice, and she recognised instantly what it was. The fear grew in the very middle of her, something that she had never felt before, even with all of her work with Barry and the other metahumans like him, this was something difference. A fear of herself.

"Yes, Caitlin." He smiled. "You. 39 dead. 51 seriously injured. All because of you."

"No." Her eyes widened, and she gripped both hands tighter, one in Cisco t-shirt and the other around his mask, and she dipped her head down to touch her head down to his chest, the tears coming again. But there was something in her that was numb, that had broken when she'd found him, and she held tighter still, pleading with him mentally to wake up, because she needed him.

"Caitlin." His hand came down on her shoulder, and she shrugged him off. But he came back, pulling at her up to look at him. She struggled against him, moving quickly to try and shrug him off without hurting Cisco in her lap. "Caitlin!"

And then she stopped, her jaw dropping open in a silent scream because white hot pain blared through each and every nerve, tears of emotional pain turning into the only outlet she had for the fire. She dropped her head, staring down at the hand, at the source of the pain, red blood welling around his wrist. Oh! But of she couldn't force the word out of her mouth, not with his hand through her chest.

"I'm sorry, Caitlin." He told her softly, and she dropped her head, looking down at Cisco thankfully because she refused to let Harrison Wells be the last thing that she would see. And then she whimpered, realising that this was how Cisco died, in so much pain, and all alone. "I didn't want to hurt either of you."

The breath left her when he removed his hand.

* * *

So, this is a tiny little Easter present for Emma...

Feel free to hate this. I do!  
IIHH Xx


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